Several years ago, while working for CRBP, I met a nice woman who had decided to donate to CRBP her deceased husband’s old collection of bicycles. It took two trips to her home in Michigan to get all the bikes back to the shop, and on the second trip I noticed a large set of oxygen/acetylene tanks in her garage. These, I learned, also used to belong to her husband and she didn’t know what to do with them. To make a long story short, I returned for a third time last summer and in exchange for cleaning out the remaining bicycle junk in her basement, came home with the tanks. I made the mistake of not reading before hand how to properly transport oxygen and acetylene, so (after reading later how to do it…) I was glad that this didn’t happen:
For the past few years, I’ve been enjoying following some blogs written by folks that make bicycle racks (the luggage kind) by brazing steel tubing. It looked like fun, so I thought I’d give it try. Following Alex’s advice, I purchased a few tools and some tubing, and for my first project made a torch holder out of bicycle tubing I cut out of a junky old Walmart bike.
My first rack was a rear rack for a bicycle I’m building up for my mom.
The picture above shows some of the pieces laid out prior to brazing.
I don’t have pictures of the completed rack, but this is picture of brazing a joint using 1/4 tubing inside 5/16 tubing. That’s NOT what good brazing looks like! The brass filler that[s dribbling down the side had to be filed off. The better you get, the less filing you have to do. I’m still quite the filer…
A few days ago I started on a front rack for the same bike.
Here’s a picture of the platform just before brazing two of the inner cross pieces. The middle piece was already brazed. I’m using two spokes and some small C-clamps to make sure that the pieces I’m going to braze stay in place.
Here’s a close up of one of the joints with flux applied.
Here all the joints have been brazed.
And this shows those brazed joints filed. The piece that will be the backrest is just setting on the rack. You can also see some of the finished (except for paint) rear rack in the background.
I really enjoy the slow, methodical process of making stuff with my hands, and brazing has been no different. There’s something extremely calming and fulfilling about hanging out in the garage in the summer with the humidity, the radio and nothing on my mind but the project at hand. I’m going to greatly miss my tools and workbench while we’re in England (a close second to my family!). Hopefully I’ll find a place across the pond where I can continue this type of tinkering.
